[WikiEN-l] Re: Known Trolls

[Jimmy Wales]

Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Personally, I think Wikipedia should try to move away from deterrence 
> strategies like bans, IP blocks and arbitration committees, and 
> toward a reputation-management system like they have at Slashdot or 
> Kuro5hin or eBay. A reputation-management system combines rewards 
> with punishments. What's missing from Wikipedia's system is any kind 
> of reward for GOOD behavior.

Well, there's no mechanized system, but there certainly is old
fashioned human "reputation".

I'm not opposed, in the abstract, to reputation management systems of
the type that you're talking about, other than to say that they are
notoriously difficult to design well, notoriously easy to game-play,
and generally lack the subtlety that old-fashioned human reputation
has.

Different people do different things and gain positive reputation in
many different ways.  Some spend a lot of time writing original
material on uncontroversial subjects.  Some spend a lot of time
writing here, about policy.  Some do a lot of copy editing.  Some sit
on VotesForDeletion.  Some look out for vandalism.  Some spend a lot
of time writing original material on *controversial* subjects, a risky
and dangerous avocation for reputation.  :-)

It's hard to imagine any sort of mechanized system which could begin
to capture all the nuances.

On the other hand, reputation management systems can scale to a much
larger size than the human system.  Maybe.

There are sysops who I don't even know, who I've never spoken to, not
in private email, not on the wiki, not on the mailing list.

A couple of people wrote to me with probably justified complaints
about my appointments to the committees that I overlooked some very
good people who I don't happen to know.

--Jimbo